


When the World Crumbled

by okemmelie



Category: Firebringer - Team StarKid
Genre: F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, inspired by a book im re-reading for the 394234th time, keeri doesn't get flashbacks she just remembers bad things vividly, keeri is a babe and no one can change my mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22163971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okemmelie/pseuds/okemmelie
Summary: Keeri doesn't like thunder. It brings back bad memories.
Relationships: Keeri/Zazzalil (Firebringer)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	When the World Crumbled

**Author's Note:**

> keeri is the best and i love her a lot. she deserves the world. send tweet

A loud noise from outside rang through the cave and Keeri sat up just in time to see her friends through the darkness in a cold, brief light that was gone almost as fast as it had come. They called it the rumbling and Keeri did not like it. Sometimes, when it was particularly close by, she swore she could feel the earth shake beneath her and it brought back nothing but fear from a time long ago.

Keeri remembered when the world first crumbled. It wasn’t her first memory, but it was the last she had of the place before this one. She had been very young, six summers at most, and she had lived someplace far away from here.

Her old home was one by the water. She remembered running out into the running water and picking small, shining shells from the shore. She remembered a woman with a kind smile, one she used to call Ma, as well as a man with the warmest blue eyes she had ever seen. She was certain his name was Pa.

She was more careless then. Now she had a job and a tribe to tend to. She didn’t have time to be careless anymore: She only had time to gather nuts. Back then, she had time to do whatever she wanted to. And mostly what she wanted was to cuddle up to this woman called Ma and go for swims in the river.

One day, she had gone to the water by her lonesome. She had gone for a swim and she had sat in the warm sand, making a little hut that kind of looked like the one she lived in.

But then the earth beneath her had begun to shake, her sand hut had fallen in on itself and she had gotten so scared. She had been on the earth for some time and while she did not know much, she did know one thing: It was not supposed to shake.

It had never done that before and she never wanted it to do so again. So she began calling out for her Ma, but she got no answer. With her legs shaking beneath her, she had made a run for the huts. But she was too slow. She was too slow and when she arrived, the earth had already begun to tear.

It opened up it’s giant maw and it swallowed the huts and her home and her memories of safety and happiness. And while the earth’s mouth eventually closed, it didn’t entirely stop the world from shaking. It didn’t entirely stop the loud noises that Keeri so desperately wished she could forget.

For the first time in her short life, Keeri had been alone. Sure, she had made some trips to the water on her own a few times, but the huts and her home had always been just within range and now? That was all gone. She was alone. Truly alone.

She was forced to take her first steps out into the world on her own and she did not like it back then. She still didn’t. She spent four days alone and for someone who’d never been alone before that, four days was an awful long time.

And now she was in the cave. It was the same cave as she’d slept in ever since her short four day adventure of being on her own. It was the first people that had found her in the forest when she’d given up and it was the first tribe she had understood that she was a part of: Like, really a part of.

She was in that very cave and for the first time since back when the world crumbled, she felt alone again. That wasn’t entirely true. It was the first time since the last time it rumbled, but that didn’t make the fear feel any less paralyzing, any less real.

Maybe she was too caught up in her own thoughts, because she didn’t notice the person moving up to her until Zazzalil put her arm around her and pulled her close. Letting that happen wasn’t a hard choice to make and Keeri soon ends up with her face gently resting against Zazzali’s chest. It’s warm and comforting and way less scary than sitting alone in a room filled with people.

She felt a tear running down her cheek. It’s the first time it’s happened. Not the first time in her life, of course. Keeri’s cried many times. She cried when the world crumbled, she cried when she was hungry and alone in the woods and she cried when Zazzalil asked her to be her wife some time ago.

But she’s never cried because of the rumbling. She’s never cried like this. And it felt stupid, because she’s never felt as safe during the rumbling before. Why was she crying now and not one of the many nights where she’s been too scared to even move?

Eventually, sleep found her. She’s not sure whether she stopped crying or fell asleep first, but fall asleep she did. The soft morning light woke her up and the feeling of Zazzalil’s arms still around brought Keeri her first smile of the day.


End file.
